As long as there have been states and armies, there have been
massacres. In previous centuries, these were openly acknowledged for
what they were: acts of terrorism against those who resisted their
rulers or their conquerors, or those who seemed likely to resist in the
future. Terrorism was understood by all to be what a state did to keep
subjugated populations in line, at home or abroad.

In the modern era, however, rulers
of the major colonial powers were confronted by working class struggles
in their own countries, including struggles for democracy, at the same
time as they were faced with the need to put down the resistance of
colonized peoples against their colonizers.

Democracy, even in its limited
parliamentary form, was seen as a terrible threat. The British ruling
class never forgot that Parliament had tried and executed the king,
Charles I, in 1649. The French never forgot that the Revolution had
beheaded Louis XI in 1793.

In this new and dangerous world,
shaping public opinion became increasingly important for those in power.
If the people were going to be allowed to vote, then they had to be
made to believe in the legitimacy of the existing social system, and
ideology and propaganda are more effective tools for doing this than
naked force. In the context of colonialism, the public at home, and the
officials and soldiers who imposed their rule on the colonies, needed to
be told that what they were doing, no matter how brutal, was done in
the interests of defending Western values and Western civilization. In
the colonies themselves, it was desirable to persuade the elites, at
least, that they too would benefit from colonial rule, which, after all,
was bringing them the benefits of Western civilization.

The problem with propaganda,
however, is that it is often starkly at odds with reality. When people
don’t buy into the lies they have been told, they can become dangerous.

And so, all too often, it seems that defending civilization requires massacres.

The model for modern massacres
could well be the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, when some
15,000 people were slaughtered by the French army in the streets of
Paris, causing the politician who ordered the massacre to proclaim “The
victory of order, justice, and civilization is at last won!”

The important work of maintaining
order, justice, and civilization was also high in the minds of the
British authorities in India on that day in April 1919 when residents of
Amritsar gathered in the Jallianwalla Bagh, a public garden (park)
surrounded by walls, for a meeting to protest recent acts of repression
by the British colonial authorities. The British military commander,
Col. Reginald Dyer, brought his troops to the Jallianwalla Bagh, had
them seal off all the entrances, and then ordered them to fire into the
crowd. Shooting continued for ten minutes, until soldiers had run out of
ammunition. When they were done, about 1,500 people lay dead, and many
more were wounded. Dyer stated later that his intention had been to
strike terror into the population to teach them not to resist British
rule. In fact, it had the opposite effect: the massacre became an
important catalyst of the Indian independence movement.

South Africa’s apartheid state
confronted a similar gathering in Sharpeville in 1960, when residents
defying the law requiring them to carry passbooks at all times came to
the local police station, without their passbooks, in an act of civil
disobedience, to offer themselves up for arrest. The police responded by
firing into the crowd, killing 69 people, 10 of them children, and
injuring 180 others. Sharpeville marked a turning point in South
Africa’s history: it galvanized the anti-apartheid movement within the
country and internationally. The date of the massacre, March 21, is now
commemorated as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination.

The record of massacres by the
defenders of order, justice, and civilization is endless, and many of
them have entered our collective memories: Nanjing in 1937, May Lai in
1968, Soweto in 1976, Tiananmen Square in 1989....

And Gaza.

The horror that is Gaza began in
1948-9, when a quarter of a million Palestinians fled, or were driven
from their villages by the forces of the newly formed Israeli state. The
villages they left behind were quickly levelled and taken over by
Jewish settlers. In Gaza, the pain of expulsion was if anything more
severe, because many of the refugees in the camps could actually see
their land across the dividing line, and watch as the settlers took it
over.

Israel has kept Gaza under a state
of siege since 2006. It has cut off, or placed severe restrictions on,
fuel, medicine, food, building materials and other essential supplies,
including equipment needed to keep water and sewage systems working.
Gaza is essentially a giant prison, a ghetto, one of the most densely
populated places on earth. The United Nations has forecast that the
infrastructure to keep people alive is facing complete collapse by 2020.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly
said that they want to make conditions so bad that the people will be
forced to leave. The cruelty and cynicism of this collective punishment
(illegal under international law, for what that is worth) is all the
more apparent when one considers the simple fact that the people in Gaza
cannot leave. There is nowhere for them to go.

Except for this: there is somewhere
for them to go – the lands they were driven from. And in fact
international law states unequivocally that refugees must have the right
to return to their place of origin. The problem is that the states
which form the so-called “international community” have no intention of
requiring Israel to comply with international law.

But this reality -- the fact that
increasingly desperate people are living in refugee camps that are in
many cases within walking distance of the land they were driven from –
does a great deal to explain the extraordinary courage with which the
unarmed Palestinians of Gaza have faced the heavily armed Israeli
soldiers who are shooting at them from raised positions several hundred
yards away behind a massive fence. Much of the world seems to have
missed the significance, but it is essential to remember that the
actions they have been taking are called “The Great March of Return.”
The Palestinians are saying that they will never give up their right to
return to their lands.

The massacres the world has been
witnessing are Israel’s ruthless response to the people it has
victimized. More than 120 Palestinians dead, more than 12,000 wounded.
No deaths or injuries among the Israeli snipers who have been doing the
killing. And still Israel’s propaganda – parroted by much of the
‘mainstream’ media in the West – tells us that Israel is acting in
self-defense.

Nor is there any question that
perhaps some of the deaths and injuries were unintended. The Israeli
Defence Force (IDF) itself told us that “Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.”
This is no idle boast. Israel has developed the world’s most advanced
systems for surveillance, targeting, and killing. They do know exactly
where every bullet lands. Nothing they do is unintentional. This was
demonstrated again quite clearly on the day, May 19, when the Canadian
doctor, Tarek Loubani, was shot by an IDF sniper. As Loubani points out,
during the previous six weeks, not a single medic – all of whom wear
uniforms clearly identifying them as medics, and who stand apart from
the main protests – was shot. Then, on May 14, on one day, the IDF shot
19 medics. Can anyone doubt that this was intentional, that “Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed?”

Another thing the IDF has told us
is that some of the Palestinian protesters have been throwing stones in
the direction of the fence. People several hundred meters away, throwing
stones!

Once upon a time, so the story
goes, another brave individual in this land confronted a powerful
hostile army with nothing but stones in his hand. He too faced daunting
odds, but, in the end, it was David who prevailed against Goliath and
his army.

But of course, that was different,
because David was an Israelite, and therefore a hero, whereas
Palestinians are -- Palestinians, and therefore not fully human, let
alone heroes.

The extreme and widespread racist prejudice against Palestinians is
at the root of much of the indifference or hostility that Palestinians
and their allies have to fight against in their efforts to win sympathy
and support for their cause. People who claim to have the highest moral
principles immediately forget those moral principles when Palestinians
are involved.

Indeed, one of the easiest ways to test whether so-called moral
principles are really moral principles is to replace the word
‘Palestinian’ with ‘Jew’ in describing a situation or event. Suppose,
for example, that 1.75 million Jews were imprisoned in a ghetto for
decades under ever-worsening conditions. Suppose that the occupying
power that was imprisoning them systematically destroyed their homes,
denied them access to clean water and medicines, and shot them down
whenever they gathered to protest. Can we imagine the ‘world community’
standing by and supporting the occupier?

In fact, there is a historical parallel to the situation in Gaza.
In 1943, the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up against the
occupying power, using not merely stones, but guns and grenades. Do we
condemn them for resorting to violence under the circumstances they
found themselves in? Or do we admire their courage?

And how do we judge the soldiers who put down that uprising, and
the commanders who gave them their orders? What distinguishes those
solders, morally speaking, from the IDF snipers who shoot unarmed
protestors, and then are caught on camera cheering their kills? And how
do we judge the civilian population of Israel, many of whom openly
support and cheer their soldiers as they go about their work of killing
Palestinians? And what can we say about the political leaders of other
countries, Canada say, who sit down and smile and make deals with
officials of the Israeli government at the very moment that the killing
is going on?

Consider these questions. In this issue of Other Voices,
we have tried to bring you some voices – and pictures – of Palestinians,
in Gaza especially. Consider their courage, listen to their voices, and
consider what you can do to help them.

- Ulli Diemer

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Gaza

Connexions has a large selection of
articles, books, and films on Gaza, covering history, culture,
politics, and above all the effects of the Israeli siege and blockade on
the lives of the 1.75 million Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza. Whether
you’re looking for introductory materials or wanting to do in-depth
research, see the Gaza page in the Connexions Subject Index here

On Nakba Day, Palestinians in Gaza explain why they joined the ‘Great March of Return’

On May 15, Palestinians marked the ‘Nakba,’ the historic
catastrophe of the Palestinian people -- the devastating loss of most of
their land, the destruction of their communities, and their subjugation
as a people – at the hands of the Zionist settlers who founded the
state of Israel on Palestinian land.

In marking the Nakba – seen as a process of dispossession
that is still going on, not just an event that happened 75 years ago –
Palestinians express their collective determination to fight for their
rights and their survival as a people.

One of the most crucial rights that they insist on is the
right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. The right of
return is enshrined in international law, but Israel, which flouts
international law with impunity, refuses to acknowledge this right. It
is nonetheless a right Palestinians continue to fight for, none more so
than those who have been imprisoned in the Gaza ghetto. Many of the
residents of Gaza were driven from homes that were just beyond that
fence, on land that is now occupied by Israeli settlers.

This fact, combined with the horrific conditions that Israel
imposes on the people of Gaza, accounts for the extraordinary courage
with which the people of Gaza have faced the murderous violence of the
Israeli military of those last few weeks.

In this feature, some ordinary Palestinians in Gaza explain
why they joined the ‘Great March of Return’ despite the danger and the
cost. Read more

Sacrificing Gaza: The Great March of Zionist Hypocrisy

The Great March of Return, says Jim Kavanagh, is a startling,
powerful expression of Palestinian identity and resistance. Palestinians
have come out, bravely and unapologetically, to say: “We refuse to
remain invisible. We reject any attempt to assign us to the discard pile
of history. We will exercise our fundamental right to go home.” They
have done this unarmed, in the face of Israel’s use of deadly armed
force against targets (children, press, medics) deliberately chosen to
demonstrate the Jewish state’s unapologetic determination to force them
back into submissive exile by any means necessary. By doing this
repeatedly over the last few weeks, these incredibly brave men, women,
and children have done more than decades of essays and books to strip
the aura of virtue from Zionism that’s befogged Western liberals’ eyes
for 70 years. Read more

The Future of the Nakba

According to Joseph Massad, the ongoing Palestinian resistance to
the present and future Nakba, whether in Israel, the West Bank
(including Jerusalem), Gaza, or in exile, persists despite all Israel’s
efforts to crush it. The contradictions within the settler colony and
the international atmosphere have made it much more difficult for Israel
to re-embark on illegal mass expulsion of the population. As the Nakba
must involve the conquest of the land and the expulsion of the
population, then an array of obstacles now stands in Israel’s way.
Domestically, Palestinian citizens of Israel are now mobilized against
the Jewishness and colonialist nature of the state and are demanding the
dismantlement of its many racist laws. The resistance in Gaza has not
been weakened despite Israel’s monstrous ongoing invasions and murder of
thousands since 2005, when Israel withdrew its settlers and moved its
occupation forces from the interior to the perimeter of Gaza, where they
enforce a brutal siege. If the Great March of Return of the last
several weeks is any indication, the will of the Palestinian people
remains steadfast and unwavering. Read more

Eight Things I learned About Palestine While Touring Eight Western Nations

Ramzy Baroud writes: “The main theme of all my talks in various
cultural, academic and media platforms was the pressing need to refocus
the discussion on Palestine on the struggle, aspirations and history of
the Palestinian people. But, interacting with hundreds of people and
being exposed to multiple media environments in both mainstream and
alternative media, I also learned much about the changing political mood
on Palestine in the western world.” Read more

West's failure to act will be cause of the next Gaza massacre

Jewish Israelis celebrate, and governments around the world stand by
passively, as Israel massacres Palestinians in Gaza. Inaction by Western
governments, says Jonathan Cook, ensures that Israel will feel
emboldened to commit further massacres in the future. Read more

Questions about Israel's continuing violence against Gaza

Why do these terrible outbreaks of violence keep happening?
Questions and answers. Written during the Israeli attack on Gaza in July
2014, but the story remains essentially the same four years later. Read
more

The Electronic Intifada is an independent online news
publication and educational resource focusing on Palestine, its people,
politics, culture and place in the world. Founded in 2001, The
Electronic Intifada has won awards and earned widespread recognition for
publishing original, high-quality news and analysis, and first-person
accounts and reviews. The Electronic Intifada’s writers and reporters
include Palestinians and others living inside Palestine and everywhere
else that news about Palestine and Palestinians is made. EI’s reporting
is built on a foundation of documented evidence and fact-checking. It
also publishes news from leading human rights organizations, activists
and news agencies. Find out more: https://electronicintifada.net

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led
movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple
principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest
of humanity. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the
BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international
law. BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic
associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Find
out more: https://bdsmovement.net

Ali Abunimah takes a comprehensive look at the shifting tides of
the politics of Palestine and the Israelis in a neoliberal world -- and
makes a compelling and surprising case for why the Palestine solidarity
movement just might win. He provides an effective strategy for advancing
the struggle for a just, single-state solution in Palestine. Read more

The Gaza Strip is among the most densely populated places in the
world. More than two-thirds of its inhabitants are refugees, and more
than half are under eighteen years of age. Since 2004, Israel has
launched eight devastating “operations” against Gaza’s largely
defenseless population. Thousands have perished, and tens of thousands
have been left homeless. In the meantime, Israel has subjected Gaza to a
merciless illegal blockade.

What has befallen Gaza is a man-made humanitarian disaster.

Based on scores of human rights reports, Norman G. Finkelstein's
new book presents a meticulously researched inquest into Gaza’s
martyrdom. He shows that although Israel has justified its assaults in
the name of self-defense, in fact these actions constituted flagrant
violations of international law. Read more

A documentary film about life under siege. Independent
journalists Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen documented Israel’s 2014
assault on Gaza during the war, and chronicled its horrific aftermath.
As they waded through the rubble of Gaza’s destroyed border regions,
they turned a camera onto the survivors of the slaughter and let them
speak for themselves. Dan returned, week after week, to capture on film
the daily struggles of the people of Gaza as they suffered through one
of the worst winters in recorded history, and then weathered the
sweltering summer heat without electricity and -- in many cases --
without homes. While giving voice to the pain of a people under siege,
Cohen and Blumenthal also highlighted Gazans’ inspiring acts of creative
resistance, from painting to break-dancing to literature, that allow
them maintain their humanity in the face of deprivation and war. Yet
this film is much more than a documentary about Palestinian resilience
and suffering. It is a chilling visual document of war crimes committed
by the Israeli military, featuring direct testimony and evidence from
the survivors. Find out more

Marek Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto
uprising, its last commander, and one of the few resistance fighters to
survive. While other resistance fighters were honoured by Israel,
Edelman, despite his central role, was ignored by the Jewish state and
official Jewish organizations. When he died at the age of 90, still
living in Poland, Sydney Nestel writes, “The President of Poland spoke
at his funeral, held in the old Jewish cemetery of Warsaw. Two thousand
people attended the grave-side ceremony. But no one from the Israeli
government attended. No official representative of any international
Jewish organization attended either: not even from the Holocaust
memorialization organizations.”

Why was Edelman ostracized by Israel and Zionist organizations?
Because Edelman was, and remained, a firm anti-Zionist, who even went to
far as to express solidarity with the Palestinian resistance
organizations, addressing a letter to them during the second intifada in
2002, using terms that showed that he saw their struggle as comparable
to the struggle of Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Read more in
Sydney Nestel’s blog here

The famous – and by now overused – expression that history is
written by the victors can be countered in many ways, says Israeli
historian Ilan Pappe. One way is by unpacking the victors’ publications
in order to expose the lies, fabrications and misrepresentations, as
well as their less conscious actions. A re-reading of these open sources
about the Nakba, mostly written by Israelis themselves, unlocks fresh
historiographical perspectives on the big picture of that period – while
declassified documents allow us to see that picture in a higher
resolution. Rereading these open sources, especially in tandem with the
numerous oral histories of the Nakba, reveals the barbarism and
dehumanization that accompanied the catastrophe. The barbarism is common
to settler communities in the formative years of their colonization
projects and can sometimes be obscured by the dry and evasive language
of military and political documents. Read more

June 12, 1964South Africa sentences Nelson Mandela to life imprisonment.Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress’s
armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation") is sentenced to
life imprisonment by South Africa’s apartheid regime. Mandela is
denounced as a terrorist because of his willingness to resort to armed
struggle in a situation where peaceful protest against apartheid had
been made impossible.

Thirty years later Mandela is elected President in South
Africa’s first multi-racial election, and world leaders and journalists
who had previously scorned him as a terrorist declared that they had
always supported him.

June 13, 1971Publication of the Pentagon PapersThe New York Times publishes the first excerpts from the
Pentagon Papers, provided to the newspaper by former Pentagon analyst
Daniel Ellsberg and his associate Anthony Russo.

In the late 1960s, while working as a military analyst,
Ellsberg becomes increasingly disturbed by the U.S. war against Vietnam,
and by the way the truth about the nature of the war is being kept from
the public. He eventually decides to copy the secret documents he has
access to and make them available to the press. The papers reveal that
the government has been systematically lying about the conduct and state
of the war.

June 16, 1976The Soweto UprisingSouth African police open fire on black students in Soweto
who are peacefully protesting a law requiring them to learn Afrikaans,
the language of the small white majority presiding over the racist
regime known as apartheid. Over 150 are killed and hundreds more are
injured in the shooting.

June 19, 1938Bloody Sunday in VancouverAt 5:00 am, police launch an attack on unemployed workers,
members of the Relief Project Workers’ Union, who have been occupying
Vancouver’s post office and art gallery for the past month in an effort
to get help for unemployed workers. The occupiers are forcibly evicted,
and then beaten up with extreme brutality by police waiting outside.
When the news of the police attack becomes known later that day, between
ten and fifteen thousand people turn up to protest against “police
terror.”

June 11, 2018 - TorontoThe State of Human Rights in IsraelJoin Chen Brill Egri, a campaigner from Amnesty International
Israel to hear about Amnesty's work in Israel including its work with
refugees and human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Chen
has been activist against the occupation and other human rights
violations in Israel for many years.

June 13, 2018 - OttawaFifty Years and Counting: Is the Israeli Occupation Sustainable?The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory is
currently the longest in the world, at 50 years and counting. Amidst the
gloom, is there any room for optimism for a sustainable and just peace
accord between Israel and Palestine?

June 14, 2018 - VancouverSocial Justice Beyond Borders: Canadian Mining Companies & Human RightsAs part of Adler University's Social Justice Beyond Borders
Series, we are inviting Amnesty International to discuss how Canadian
companies are impacting human rights abroad, including indigenous
rights, access to clean water, displacement, sexualized and gender based
violence, and more.

Since Sri Lanka declared its war on the Liberation Tamil
Tigers of Eelam over in 2009, coordinated mass attacks by Sinhalese
Buddhists on Muslims have been on the rise. Perpetrators have included
monks and the police. How do these ongoing attacks flow from the
historic anti-Muslim violence of 1915, the island's first reported
ethnic riots? How does this new violence reflect or diverge from
previous anti-Tamil riots? What do these attacks tell us about Sinhala
Buddhist majoritarianism? How has the global War on Terror shaped
responses to these attacks? What might this political moment in Sri
Lanka teach us about the neo-Nazi rise in Canada?

Importantly: how have communities organized? How have people
protected each other? What does friendship look like in moments of
acute violence? Who and what is community? Would Tamil-Muslim solidarity
be useful in Toronto or in Sri Lanka? What would it look like? What has
it looked like?

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